The Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires

I had a lot of strong emotional reactions to things in this book, which is a good thing. No really, a lot.

I think my favorite part of the book is a trope I really enjoy: what is a monster/the humans are the monsters. Don’t get me wrong! The vampire is evil and scary and menacing. But the husbands! Especially Patricia’s and Grace’s husbands.

Grace’s husband: wife beater. ‘Nuff said. But Patricia’s husband, Carter? Oh my $DEITY.

Carter doesn’t beat his wife. He’s not overtly cruel. The vampire says Carter is cheating on Patricia, but I don’t know if that’s true and am not sure if I care. But his gaslighting and medicalizing his wife and children are horrifying. He manipulates his wife into taking Prozac. He tells her children she’s crazy and they don’t have to listen to her, and as a result they treat her with contempt. He puts her in an institution and manufactures a scene to undermine her in front of her children and hurt the children to punish her. Carter is a monster.

(Kitty’s husband seems to be a well-intentioned deadbeat. He’s probably the best of the lot. Maryellen’s husband is mostly okay to her but apparently was fired from his last job for police brutality against a child, so… not great.)

And the nice Southern ladies? What they do to the vampire is both justified and 🤬ed up. Do NOT cross these ladies; they will END you. They. Will. END. You. Their taping up the instructions where the vampire can see them is an extra-sadistic touch.

By contrast, the vampire James Harris appears to be racist and sexist in his choice of victims and if the biting is sexual/sexualized (it is) he’s also a child predator. He makes nice and charms the white husbands into doing his bidding and investing in his money schemes, but uses women and children for his own needs. But this is not reality; he’s a folklore monster and a metaphor (in this case, for the white patriarchy considering women, children, and minorities disposable). I found myself thinking of the Atlanta Child Murders, a lot. But in general, not real.

But Carter? That 🤬 is real. Also, if Carter was a halfway decent psychiatrist he would be genuinely alarmed that his teen son is obsessed with Nazis, ritually abusing his toys, and harming animals. The son gets better when removed from that environment, but… yikes. The son’s Nazi obsession was treated like a cute quirk by his parents, which I found disturbing AF. Carter’s idea of what to do is to suggest they put his son on Ritalin. Ritalin is a legit drug that helps some people and also overprescribed and abused, and there’s no sign that Blue (the son) is ADHD. He concentrates on Nazis just fine. Lots of focus.

Shades of The Stepford Wives. I’m just saying. Carter drugs what he can’t control. Structurally, James Harris the vampire is the villain but I have strong feelings about Carter.

Also this book contains crawl-out-of-your-skin gross and tense/scary bits. So… good? But also a bit much for me. 🤣 Also trigger warning for sexual assault.

The audiobook narrated by Bahni Turpin was AMAZING. She’s SO GOOD. I picked this book up as a Chirp Audio deal.

huge huge tw/cw: rape/ sexual assault, child abuse, gaslighting, domestic abuse, animal death, Nazism, dementia, and probably a few others I'm forgetting because geez this book nearly had it all.

Couldn't put this book down, for better or for worse. The pacing of the story was excellent and had me on my toes, but it's 2021 and (even for a book set in the 90s), I want better portrayals of the friendships between women please.

It seems like from other reviews people didn't really like this, or at least not as much as the author's other books. Having never read anything by this author before, I didn't have any expectations and enjoyed this. I found it very readable, compelling, and suspenseful. I kind of wish the reader didn't know James was a vampire along with Patty and the others because it was a little frustrating to know more than the characters did. Overall though I liked this and am glad it got recommended into my feed (somehow).